Tag: bigbird

We had a fresh meat taster day today which was 2 hours of helping the potential fresh meat skate around and get used to being on skates/seeing if they liked it.

Someone from work turned up and totally surprised me as she knows one of the others and it was really strange to see her. The league actually has 2 of us (currently) that work where I do (including me) but there are 2 more who are coming to fresh meat (who just happen to work in my department…) so to everyone else it felt like we were taking over. Although there are almost the same number of people from a different work place so it’s not like we’re taking over (not yet anyway).

It was nice to see the newbies on skates and made me think a lot about how I was when I started (terrible) and we kept telling them that it’s okay if they can’t do something yet as we all had those times. I especially told people it’s okay as according to Bigbird I’m the league’s “success story” so if I can skate backwards now then they can do it too. It’ll just take them time but most (if not all) of them were much better than I was at my first session so they’ll be fine. The first fresh meat session isn’t for another 2 weeks as we have a scrim next week with a different team (but I won’t be taking part in that…).

I’m still not sure how I feel about roller derby at the moment, or rather, the league. I love skating with everyone, well, most of the time I do…I just…I’m just still so frustrated about being 2 frickin’ boxes away from being scrim passed. I’m seriously considering not going to training on Wednesday cause I don’t want to sit around for half an hour but I know that I should go because the 1.5 hours before hand should be good for me…but I’m not convinced right now. Although last week’s training session wasn’t too bad and we did a drill where everyone got to jam for 2 minutes but it was continuous so we had to do the drill for 10 minutes. We were all very tired afterwards.

There’s a league meeting on Tuesday too and I’ll see how that goes, I’m not super keen to go because of one I went to last year that didn’t feel productive/useful in the slightest but this one might and one of the topics is pretty relevant to me so I should be there (even if I’m missing bowling with my friends and his new girlfriend :/) It’s possibly the first time derby’s clashed with something in my non-derby life as I’m usually able to move plans to another day and never really thought much about stuff clashing and causing problems…and I’m not even on the team/it’s not even a real match that it’s clashing with but I already feel annoyed about it.

I’m definitely going to the roller disco tomorrow to work on backwards laps (even though I can pass those, I just need to actually drag 2 team skaters to bloody time me) and knee taps, as well as jumping/hopping and glides. I’ll also try to go to a drop in on Thursday if I leave work on time and if there’s no off skates warmup on Wednesday I’ll get stuff tested if I can.

Fresh meat started just under a year ago (if I don’t count the first taster session where I didn’t even try a pair of skates on) and out of my cohort there are about 9 of us who’ve continued until now. Two of them (Mercy and Damage) have just become full skills passed and one other pre mins who was in the fresh meat intake before us (Fire) has also passed. There’s another skater (Bigbird) who only has to do her 27/5 and then she’s passed too.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m so happy that they’re passed and can play and scrim and that I can cheer them on at bouts (but not when I’m NSOing…) but it’s just…a bit sad? I know I’m nowhere near as good as they are at skating – I can’t step forwards and backwards or glide and even though I’m not too far away from being skills passed it still sucks a little. I know I’ve come a long way since I started fresh meat where I couldn’t even stand up on my skates without holding onto someone else (and in one case, two people had to hold onto me) but I still feel like I haven’t progressed as much as everyone else. Thistle even said that she remembered the first time I came and couldn’t make it to the hall without falling over (I actually did that at Tuesday’s practice, guess who’s gonna be showing fresh meat that we all fall over and it’s okay?) I suppose in terms of how far we’ve come I might be the winner for that since the others could actually move from the start and have just needed to learn the skills to play derby.

We’ve just come back from the off season and it was honestly one of my favourite things (Red, you were totally right). Two months of unstructured training was awesome. I got to take my headphones and skate with music (to the annoyance of my teammates who had to yell very loudly at me to get my attention) but it really helped. I need music in my life and being able to skate to it helped me cut out a lot of distractions and noise and just do things. I got quite a lot of skills ticked off too, including my contact ones and transitions (finally!). I’d been practising transitions for ages by myself in the corner and then gradually moved to trying them on the track. There was one practice where I’d spent every second of a break practising transitions on the track which irritated Bigbird when I said that I wasn’t ready to test as she’d seen me “jumping around like a ninja all morning”. She asked someone to test me and what did I do? I tripped and landed on my face. Real smooth.

Some of the skills I passed were things that I didn’t think I could do but apparently I can (the team skaters are incredibly encouraging in that respect, they’re the ones who’ve said that I can and then they test me and I pass to my surprise but not theirs). Bigbird especially is super encouraging/terrifying because she just yells at me that we’re testing something and then I pass and she yells a bit more before moving onto the next skill. I wouldn’t have passed my contact skills without her yelling at skaters to get in a pack and start hitting me.

I guess I was nervous about being tested. I hate being watched when I’m doing something despite the fact that I and everyone else know that I can do it. I’ve mucked up a few times where we all know I can do something but as soon as someone watches/looks at me I fall over and bam. No passing for me. I did that with my double knee slides too – which are now my favourite thing to do besides transitions (oh the irony) because they’re so fun and I’m actually not terrible at double knee slides. Who knew? I hadn’t tried them before but got Red to show me how to do it and then watch me. Even some of the team skaters hate them but I don’t?

I just need to tick off 6 more things and then I’m scrim passed and can join in with the scrims we have at training. Red marked 6 things that she thinks are easy to do and I can do but I’m pretty sure I can only do 3 of those. Oh well. I’ll have to practise more off skates to get those skills down (damn left ankle with no strength) and see how it goes from there!